Search Results for: Walker Edmiston

Victor & Billy

by Mark Evanier

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 1/19/01
Comics Buyer's Guide

Saturday, December 23, 2000…

'Tis the season to be jolly but Leonard Maltin and I just depressed each other on the phone. I told him that Victor Borge had passed away and he told me that Billy Barty had died.

Mr. Borge was either a very funny pianist or a very musical comedian. I never met the man but about once a decade, commencing when I was around ten, I managed to see him perform in concert. The first time was at the Greek Theatre, here in Los Angeles, where his opening act was the eminent ventriloquist, Señor Wences. Between their two accents, I couldn't understand one word all evening but I was pretty sure they were funny.

The last time I saw Borge was about five years ago, and he performed what I suspect was the exact same act, right down to the bit about musical punctuation marks. The only thing he changed over the years was the part where he hit a loud chord, startling himself so much that he fell off the piano bench.

With great dignity, taking his own sweet time about it, he would get up and dust himself off. Then he'd open the piano bench, pull out the ends of a seat belt, close the bench, sit down, buckle himself in and launch into Rachmaninoff.

He dropped that bit about the time he turned 70. He did the rest of the act all around the world for the next 21 years.

The last few times I saw him, I could understand most of what he said. It turned out I was right. He was very funny.

---

Billy Barty was a star even before he was short.

He made his film debut somewhere around 1930, when he was six years old and roughly the right height for his age. He continued playing children for a long time, even after reaching his maximum span of 3-feet, 10 inches. Later, he became a frequent actor in movies and a guest star on a staggering number of TV programs. For a time, he even had a kids' show on Los Angeles TV. On it, he hosted Three Stooges shorts and played games with a live audience of 11-year-olds, most of whom towered over him.

People called him a midget but that wasn't so. He was a dwarf. If you want to get technical, he had what is called Cartilage Hair Syndrome Hypoplasia.

That difference mattered a lot to Billy, especially when he became famous from his TV appearances. He heard from a lot of others with similar conditions, some of whom were bothered that he allowed the press to call him a midget. The word "dwarf" had come to have a negative connotation — thank you, Mr. Disney — and Billy began to crusade against the stereotypes and certain physical problems

In 1975, he founded a non-profit organization — the Billy Barty Foundation — that did a lot to lessen the stigmas. I just copied the following from its website…

Most of us with dwarfism prefer to be described as "Little People"' And please, put the emphasis on the word 'People.' We did not spring from the pages of a storybook or emerge from an enchanted forest. We are not magical beings and we are not monsters. We are parents and sons and daughters. We are doctors and lawyers and realtors and teachers. We dream, cry, laugh, shout, fall in love, and make mistakes. We are no different from you.

Dwarfism is a condition that affects over 1.5 million people in the U.S. alone, and there are over 100 different types of dwarfism. Most Little People are born to families with no history of dwarfism. Even today, in the most open-minded and prejudice-intolerant society ever in recorded human history, people with dwarfism are still subjected to degrading stereotypes, societal barriers, and attitudinal barriers.We endure everything from job discrimination and reduced social opportunities to physical abuse and open public ridicule on a daily basis.

Billy was absolutely dedicated to the cause…which is not to say he did not have a wonderful sense of humor about his physical succinctness. It was, after all, the thing that made him famous. He also had a wicked appreciation of its occasional perks — like the fact that much of the world had to come down to meet him on his level.

I was the head writer on a number of shows produced by Sid and Marty Krofft, and he was part of their stock company, cast in most everything they did. I'm 6'3" and often, when I had to confer with Billy on some script point, I'd stoop or get down on one knee.

We'd finish our discussion and he'd start to walk away. Then he'd turn around, look at me still crouching in position and grin, "I'm leaving now. You can get up."

One time, we went to lunch together. Billy had all sorts of medical woes that made it difficult for him to walk and, since my parking space was on the other side of the lot, I said, "You wait here…I'll go get my car."

"Don't bother," he said. He led me to his parking spot in a handicapped space, right outside where we were taping and announced, "I'll drive."

It was a big car — a Lincoln, I think, bigger than any car I've ever owned. The front seat had been modified to bring it extra-close to the dashboard, and the gas pedal and brake had extensions. Billy hopped effortlessly and comfortably onto a special, elevated cushion behind the wheel. I had no such ease trying to squeeze into the passenger spot.

"You might be more comfy in the back," Billy chuckled after watching me play Twister for about two minutes.

He was right. I was. And I recall hoping that someone I knew would see me, being chauffeured around Hollywood by Billy Barty. I wanted to say to them, "That's nothing. I have four of the surviving Munchkins trimming my hedges!"

---

One of the programs we did was a short-lived thing called the Krofft Superstar Hour, which was comprised of multiple segments. We did thirteen of them in "block scheduling," meaning that we taped thirteen openings, then thirteen closings, then thirteen episodes of a department called "Horror Hotel," then thirteen episodes of "Lost Island," and so on. Later, when we had thirteen of everything, it would all be mix-and-matched into thirteen hour-long shows.

Billy was signed for the run of the series. He appeared in both "Horror Hotel" and "Lost Island," though you'd never have known he was in the former.

The Kroffts, as everyone knows, specialized in strange costumed creatures and "Horror Hotel" was full of them. The role Billy was assigned was that of Seymour the Spider, which involved a bulky, fur-covered costume that completely covered him. The character's voice was supplied by a wonderful actor named Walker Edmiston, situated at a nearby microphone.

You couldn't see or hear Billy when he played Seymour. There was no way anyone watching could have had any idea who was in the spider suit, but for the obvious fact that, whoever it was, he or she was pretty short.

We began rehearsing and the first time I watched Billy running madly around as Seymour, a little alarm bell went off in my noggin. Just being inside that get-up under hot lights was clearly an ordeal. Every break, when they took the head piece off, he was drenched in perspiration, gasping for air…and he was not a young man.

Worse, the role was very strenuous, involving a lot of chase sequences. Often, it meant scurrying up and down stairs, and Billy had trouble walking, even out of costume. He was also having trouble seeing out of the eyeholes.

I decided this wouldn't do and spent the rest of the afternoon chopping down Seymour's participation, assigning many of his lines and actions to others. This would not affect Billy's paycheck in any way. It just meant fewer hours in the spider suit and less running, which I assumed would please him. It would conserve his strength for "Lost Island," in which he would appear without an identity-hiding costume; where his acting skills were really needed.

The next morning when I walked in, a Production Assistant ran up to me and said, "Thank God you're here! You're needed down on the set. It's Billy Barty!"

"He hurt himself?" I asked. That was my first thought.

"No, he's throwing a tantrum, saying he's going to quit or something. He demands to see you."

I ran down to the set, squatted next to a very irate Mr. Barty and asked, "Billy, what's wrong?"

Furious, he waved the script revisions and yelled, "You cut me out of the show! I've been in show business for almost half a century! Nobody ever chopped my part down like this before!"

I started to quote the old maxim about there being no small roles, only small actors, then thought better of it. What I actually said was, "Billy, we're trying to save your energy…"

"You don't like my work?"

"Billy, we love your work. You're irreplaceable and we need you healthy when we start taping 'Lost Island.' We didn't want you to get hurt — "

"I'm an actor," he said. "I want to act."

I said, "Billy…no one even knows it's you. You're completely covered and Walker does the voice so — "

"I'm an actor," he said again. "I'm being paid to act, just like everyone else here. I want to act."

"Okay," I shrugged. We went back to the old scripts and, for the next two weeks, I watched Billy sweat and bump into things and become exhausted playing Seymour the Spider. And he loved every minute of it, because he was an actor and he was acting.

---

That was one of two times I saw Billy upset. The other is a story I told here a few years ago, but it's too good not to reiterate.

At the same time we were doing the Krofft shows, Hervé Villechaize was playing Tattoo, the sidekick on Fantasy Island — you know, the diminutive guy with the thick accent who used to yell, "The plane! The plane!"

Years later, I wound up producing a special on which Mr. Villechaize appeared. He was a mean and troubled little man…and I mean "little" in both the physical and spiritual sense. He somehow thought that because he was a TV star, he was entitled to the same treatment as Tom Selleck, and the same access to women. He drove them nuts on our set, grabbing and groping from unanticipated angles, and demanding they zip his fly.

Because of his condition, Hervé had no strength in his hands. He could barely grip anything and certainly could not, he claimed, work his own zipper. Ergo, every time he had a costume change or a toilet break, he would stride up to the most attractive woman around and insist she do the honors. And she would, in turn, complain to the producer, who was me.

I finally had to deputize the Stage Manager. I told him, "From now on, you are not only Stage Manager but also Associate Producer in Charge of Dwarf Trouser Adjustment." Since then, whenever people ask me what a TV producer does, I tell them this story.

Hervé was an enormous pain in many ways, not the least of which was that, in front of the camera, he was pretty lousy. His accent was impenetrable and, instead of rehearsing and learning his lines, he spent his time ordering around male employees and discomforting female ones. The lack of effort was especially galling since he'd been hired in something of a mercy booking.

Since he'd been dismissed from Fantasy Island — for reasons clearly evident — he'd had next-to-no work. This was partly due to an understandable paucity of roles for three-foot-eleven Frenchmen, but it also had something to do with the reputation he'd built within the industry. One of our producers, aware of his medical tribulations and the fact that he was about to lose his Screen Actors Guild health insurance, had insisted we find a spot for him.

We did. You know the saying about "No good deed?" Exactly.

---

I mention all this to make a point of contrast: Hervé's "stardom," such as it was, was based wholly on him being an oddity. That was why his career didn't last long. It basically consisted of a couple of freak bookings, plus the ancillary momentum from being on Fantasy Island. No one ever hired him because they thought he'd be good on camera. They just thought he'd be short.

Billy Barty was usually hired to be short, but also to be funny. That was why he was always in-demand. There are plenty of dwarves and midgets around. Billy worked steadily for close to seventy years because he was an actor and he loved acting…even loved it enough to run around for weeks in a stifling spider outfit.

But the story I wanted to close with — the one I told before — occurred one day when we were still doing the Krofft Superstar Hour. That week's TV Guide featured a cover story on Hervé that infuriated Billy. He was stalking around our set, muttering unkind comments about Mr. Villechaize. I asked him why.

His irritation, he explained, was because in the interview, Hervé had insisted he was a midget, not a dwarf. Billy said that was a lie — one that distressed him because he was working so hard to remove the negative implications of the word, "dwarf."

As he was explaining this to me, someone else came by and asked Billy what he was riled about. Billy answered them with what may well be the funniest line I've heard uttered in thirty years in and around show business.

He said, "It's Hervé. He's passing for a midget!"

I was squatting when he said it and I fell over and just laughed for around twenty minutes. I'm laughing now, recalling his delivery. He really was a very funny man.

---

I've been trying to figure out how to end this without some sort of "short" reference — you know, like, "He may have been three-foot-ten, but he was a giant, blah blah blah…" Too easy, too obvious. So I'll just say that Billy Barty was a helluva great guy and a true professional. I'm very glad he had a long, glorious career because he certainly earned it. In a field where so few get what they deserve, it's always nice when someone does.

Bob Clampett

by Mark Evanier

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 3/17/00
Comics Buyer's Guide

On February 28, 1949, a puppet show called Time For Beany debuted on KTLA, channel 5 in Los Angeles. It was instantly one of the best shows on television.

That is not much of a compliment, given how little was on television in 1949. KTLA only broadcast a few hours per day and most shows looked like what you and I might throw together with a budget of twelve dollars, an empty garage and the security camera from a 7-Eleven store. But over the next few years, TV rapidly improved and Time For Beany remained one of the best shows on television.

It was that rarest, most elusive of creatures: A kids' show that adults enjoyed watching — and not just any adults. Among its declared fans were Groucho Marx, Albert Einstein and the kid who would grow up to be Frank Zappa. (Allegedly, Einstein once cut short a high-level meeting on quantum molecular mechanics by announcing, "Excuse me, gentlemen, but it's Time For Beany!")

If you're going to do a show for no money and attract that kind of audience, you'd better be damned clever. Time For Beany was damned clever. Actually, there were many clever folks involved in its production but its producer-creator and its two performers were three of the cleverest humans ever in show business. They were, respectively, Bob Clampett, Stan Freberg and Daws Butler.

Time For Beany was my pre-natal favorite. That is almost not a joke: My mother watched it every night when she was pregnant with me. She says she liked thinking that the kid inside her was somehow hearing or absorbing all its brilliant silliness. Not long after I was born in 1952, I became, I'm told, an avid watcher of the show. I, of course, have no memory of this but I'll bet the sound was a lot better outside the womb.

There's a theory that the personality of a child can be nurtured and steered by directing certain kinds of music towards the belly of an expectant mother. I have no idea if there's even a morsel of truth to this notion. I will only note that, in all my life, I have never felt closer to the work of any creative talents than the individual and collective outputs of Bob Clampett, Stan Freberg and Daws Butler.

Freberg was a former cartoon voice artist and radio actor who went on to become one of America's great satirists, and the master of the funny commercial. Butler was another cartoon voice actor who later worked with Freberg on radio and records, but he remained in the cartoon voice field and became one of its three-or-so best, the other two being Mel Blanc and June Foray. No one ever did what Stan and Daws did better than Stan and Daws.

---

Nor did anyone ever top Bob Clampett in his career. Actually, Bob had three careers and he was wildly successful in all three. First, he was a director of theatrical animation. Later, he created and produced puppet shows for television. Still later, he produced animation for TV. Time For Beany, with its myriad early Emmy awards, was the crowning achievement of Career #2.

Robert "Bob" Clampett was born in 1913. As a youth, he developed a love of cartooning, puppetry and near-lethal punning — three skills that would serve him well in his putative adulthood. In 1931, he went to work for the Harman-Ising animation studio, just in time to help animate the very first Merrie Melodies cartoon. Harman-Ising soon passed the series on to what became the Warner Brothers cartoon department and Bob went with it.

At first, Bob was an animator and a contributor of gags. In 1936, he was promoted to the director's chair from which he would eventually supervise around 80 cartoons. The first 20 or so were good. The next 20 or so were better. And then he hit a streak and began to make great cartoon after great cartoon. Here are just a few titles…

Porky in Wackyland. Tin Pan Alley Cats. A Tale of Two Kitties. Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid. Horton Hatches the Egg. Kitty Kornered. A Corny Concerto. An Itch in Time. Falling Hare. Baby Bottleneck. Wabbit Twouble. Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs. And my favorite, The Great Piggy Bank Robbery.

If Bob had done nothing else but these films, we would still be hailing him as one of the all-time greats. I watched them on TV as a kid and thought they were very funny. But I didn't know how very funny until I saw them with an audience.

Theatrical cartoons were made to be viewed, not alone at home on a little box, but on a big screen with lotsa people all around. You have to see them that way to appreciate how hilarious some of them can be…and how expertly timed. That timing was perhaps the most amazing aspect of what Clampett and his crew of storymen, animators and other artists brought forth.

The director of a live-action comedy can overshoot a little…let each scene run a bit long, perhaps shoot some alternate versions and some "coverage" (extra shots). Then he can preview the film in front of a few live gatherings and edit according to their reactions. Almost every live-action film undergoes renovations — some of them, serious — after audience testing.

Except on rare occasions at Disney, animation directors have never had those luxuries. A cartoon is made to pretty much its final length. When you edit, you don't have alternate takes or the same scene shot from different angles. You can't let scenes run long and then trim later. You have to know what you're doing from the start

Bob knew what he was doing.

The other cartoon directors at WB did too but, for the most part, later on. Clampett's "golden streak" ran from roughly 1942 until he left the studio in 1946. If you compare that work to what others were concurrently outputting, it's even more impressive. You can also see that Bob had a lot to do with establishing what we now know as the style and standard of Warner Brothers cartoons…and a lot to do with launching and/or developing many of their key characters, including Tweety, Daffy Duck and The Wabbit.

---

As I said, I began to realize how brilliant these films were when I saw them with live audiences. I recommend the experience to those of you who've only watched them on your 19" Trinitrons.

That's a downside of the home video revolution. There used to be many more cartoon festivals, as they were just about the only place one could see classic animation. In the late-60's/early-70's, it seemed like there was one every week somewhere. I recall some glorious evenings, crammed into ancient theaters and auditoriums, sharing with friends and strangers, glorious laughter and a thrilling sense of discovery.

And there was another bonus: It was at one such festival around 1970 that I got to meet Bob Clampett. I don't recall what I said to him but I guarantee you that it was gushy and filled with gratitude…and that Bob was humble, appreciative and disarmingly friendly. That was the way he was, always and with everyone — utterly accessible, always willing to take time to answer anyone's questions about anything he'd done.

Wait. I hear skepticism: Okay, so the guy liked to talk about his work. Fine. Lots of people love to talk about themselves. What's the big deal?

Well, with Bob, the big deal was that he didn't just love to talk about his work. He even more enjoyed talking about your work.

Bob would gladly spend an hour answering your questions, no matter how geeky. He'd discourse on Warner Brothers cartoons or Time For Beany or Thunderbolt the Wondercolt (that was another of his puppet shows) or anything else he'd seen or done. But you had to be prepared to spend an hour answering his questions about what you were up to.

He was genuinely fascinated by what his fans were doing, what they were accomplishing. He'd give you an autograph but, if you'd done anything you could sign, you had to give one to him. He'd give you all the wisdom and info he had to give — which was considerable — but you had to share yours, however little there may have been of either.

I didn't have a lot to offer. The only time I ever felt I was telling Bob anything he didn't know was once when we sat together, whispering back and forth, throughout a screening of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. I was explaining obscure cinema "in" jokes and even murkier sexual imagery, while Bob kept looking at me like Russ Meyer, Roger Ebert and I had all conspired to drive him mad, simply mad.

Still, away from that movie, he was a wonderful fount of information and inspiration. If you ever got to meet Bob — we lost him, sadly, back in '84 — you know all this. And if you never got that opportunity…well, I'm sorry you never had that pleasure, because it was one. I can, however, suggest the next best thing…

---

All of this has been leading up to an unabashed plug for what's easily the best thing I've seen released on DVD — and it's only on DVD, not videotape. If you don't have a DVD player yet, Bob Clampett's Beany and Cecil — The Special Edition is reason enough to purchase one.

It's a new release from Image that, at first glance, appears to feature just cartoons from the 1962 Beany and Cecil cartoon series. And it does — a dozen of the best, splendidly transferred anew from the 35mm negatives.

That alone would be worth the $29.99 retail price (Amazon-dot-com has it for $23.99) but that's just the beginning. The disc is a loving and thorough overview of the incredible careers of Bob Clampett.

There are also four full episodes of the Time for Beany puppet show, samples of Bob's other TV shows. There's also a gallery with hundreds of still images of Beany and Cecil merchandise, publicity photos and backstage glimpse, plus hours of audio interviews with Clampett, Freberg and another performer on the puppet show, Walker Edmiston. You even get an audio recording of an actual Beany and Cecil story session.

(Another of the great things about Bob was that he saved everything! A bunch of us were up at his house one night, watching his old cartoons. Following Russian Rhapsody, which he'd made in 1944, one of them asked Bob how a certain effect had been accomplished. Bob said, "Just a second," disappeared into the next room and returned with the actual cels and background paintings for that scene, so he could explain in full.)

So doesn't this new DVD release sound that terrific? Doesn't all that make it a must-have? Well, as they say on the infomercials: Wait! There's more!

Also included are a dozen-or-so samplings of Bob's "lost work" — pilots, test films and/or audio tracks from projects that, 'til now, never saw the light of day. If that doesn't sell you on your purchase, nothing will, so I'll just shut up,

— That is, after I mention that it was all lovingly assembled by Robert Clampett, Jr., doubtlessly with an assist from the lovely and charming Sody Clampett, who was the spouse of Bob, Senior. Fine job, Clampetts!

To those who are DVD-less and pondering the purchase of a player, this is a splendid example of how DVD is better than plain ol' videotape or even Laserdisc. It's not just the video quality; it's all the extras and the interactive menu that allows one to access them directly. You get almost four hours of goodies on this disc and everything is a goody.

If they could figure a way to include a big, raucous live audience in the package, it would be perfect.

---

The plugging completed, I'll close with one of my favorite memories of Bob…

It was at one of those animation festivals I mentioned earlier — one I'd help program — held in a big conference room (not an auditorium). This was after I'd gotten to know Bob and we were standing together in the back as a packed house was roaring at A Tale of Two Kitties, which was the first Tweety cartoon, made during World War II.

During those fun years, many cities staged Blackout Drills, during which everyone had to extinguish every bulb or candle in their home. Air Raid Wardens would prowl the street and issue warnings if they saw the slightest flicker of luminosity. It became a catch-phrase of sorts to yell, "Turn out that light!"

At the end of A Tale of Two Kitties, Tweety is presiding over a blackout and the last line of the cartoon is him screaming, "Turn out those lights!" Just before we got to it, Bob motioned to the light switch near me and whispered, "We could do a funny gag here. Turn on the lights in the room just before Tweety yells, 'Turn out those lights!'"

If Bob had asked me to leap out the window, I might have done so…but this request seemed wrong somehow. I whispered back, "This cartoon is too funny as it is. It doesn't need any extra jokes."

Bob smiled, "You're right," so I didn't do it.

At the end of the film, there was huge applause for it and all the Clampett masterworks that had preceded it that evening. Bob was mobbed by admirers but later, when we were alone, I tried to explain to him why I'd overruled his suggestion: "See, I wanted the audience to experience the film the way you made it and — "

He interrupted. "No, you were right. That's a problem I have some time. I'm always looking for that extra gag."

Get this: Here's a man, hailed as one of the all-time greats in his field, watching people convulsed in laughter at his work. And he's still trying to improve on a cartoon he made in 1942.

I think that was the secret of Bob's success. He was always looking for that extra gag. "Too funny" was never enough.

Don Messick

by Mark Evanier

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 11/21/97
Comics Buyer's Guide

In the forties, M.G.M. was the movie studio with, they claimed, "more stars than there are in the heavens." No one thought that was excessive bragging; not with a roster of players that included Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, the Marx Brothers, Clark Gable, and Tom and Jerry.

Tom and Jerry were the lowest-paid of the batch. That's because they were drawn.

For a decade and a half, the producer-director team of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera conjured up short cartoons of the cat/mouse team. Their films — highly-popular to the point of winning Oscars — ran proudly before M.G.M. movies in theaters until 1956, when M.G.M. decided to get out of animation.

Suddenly unemployed, Bill and Joe knew there was scant future in making cartoons for theatrical release. Instead, they formed an operation to produce them for television. That meant doing them a lot faster and a whole lot cheaper. The last seven-minute Tom and Jerry cartoons had been produced on a budget of $65,000 apiece. The first five-minute Ruff n' Reddy TV films were made for $2700 each.

The cutback was achieved many ways. Ruff was a feisty little cat and Reddy was an easygoing dog, and neither of them moved a lot. That their adventures were fun to watch had a lot to do with the cleverness of the scripts and with two men — Don Messick and Daws Butler. Don did the voice of Ruff, Daws did the voice of Reddy, and they split all the other parts.

Daws and Don were two of the best voice actors ever. Hire one of them and you had an instant cast. Either could play a six-year-old boy, a doddering octogenarian, a feisty Irish policeman, a gravel-voiced stevedore, a hysterical teen-ager in the throes of puberty, a whimpering Russian Tsar, and an inebriated lhasa apso with a bad stutter. And he could play all of them at once, arguing with one another, each voice interrupting the next.

That's what either could do. Put both of them in a studio and you had a rep company of infinite possibilities. And what's more, they were funny.

Ruff n' Reddy was a good start. Then Bill and Joe sold the Kellogg's people on a show called Huckleberry Hound, which featured three separate cartoons. Each week, you got the adventures of Pixie & Dixie (Don was Pixie, Daws was Dixie and their eternal rival, the Brando-like Mr. Jinks). You also got a wonderful cartoon of Yogi Bear (Daws was Yogi, Don was his sidekick Boo Boo, as well as playing the long-suffering Ranger Smith). And there was the title character's cartoon (Daws was Huck, Don was whatever supporting players were needed each time).

If one assessed the animation, one would find this show woefully deficient by the Disney Scale. But 6-year-olds just care if it's funny. I was six when Huckleberry Hound went on the air so I can testify: They were very funny — in large part because of Daws and Don.

Daws, who passed away around nine years ago, was one of the dearest, most talented men I have ever met. Today, the cartoon business abounds with talented folks who studied in his acting classes. Someday soon, I will have to devote a column or three to this wonderful person.

Don Messick, I regret to report, died on October 24, 1997. I'd like to tell you about him now.

---

Don Messick was born in Buffalo, New York in 1926. They didn't get his mother to the hospital in time and Don was born in an ambulance.

His family soon moved to Maryland where, at the age of 12, Don began hearing strange voices out of nowhere. That was odd enough but soon, people around Don began hearing them, as well. It didn't take long for a doctor to deduce that the voices were coming from Don. He was unconsciously talking to himself and others.

Years later, he recalled the experience: "The doctor said, 'Lots of people talk without saying anything, but you're a freak. You say things without even talking.' He told me to gargle with pink ink. Instead, I got myself a wooden partner and became a ventriloquist." Soon, with a whole repertoire of voices at his command, he broke into local radio, took acting lessons, played night clubs and dabbled in summer stock theater. In 1947, fresh from the Army, he headed for Los Angeles and began to perform on the radio shows of the day.

Making the rounds, he met another new radio actor — Daws Butler, who was himself fresh out of the Navy. They became friends and Daws, who was also starting to do animated cartoons, helped his pal break into that field.

Don could never recall quite what his first voice job was but it was probably a line or two as Droopy. A gent named Bill Thompson originated and usually performed Droopy's voice. Tex Avery, who directed the mush-mouthed mutt's cartoons, was always adding a new gag at the last minute and calling Thompson back to record one more line. Often, Thompson wasn't available so Tex himself would imitate the voice or have Daws (who did other roles in his films) approximate it. Neither was completely satisfactory.

One time, Daws told Tex he knew an actor who could replicate the distinctive voice better than anyone. Messick came in and did the voice so well, he became the Designated Pinch Droopy. Years later when Thompson passed away, Don inherited the role.

He and Daws sometimes did commercials together, but it was when Hanna-Barbera started up that they became the studio "A" team. Don soon proved his value, not only to voice "star" characters but also as a utility infielder.

On the original Jonny Quest series, he played Jonny's father, Dr. Benton Quest. He was one of the Hillbilly Bears, he was Precious Pupp, he was one of The Impossibles, he was Gloop and Gleep on The Herculoids. He was Hong Kong Phooey's cat, the Chan Clan's dog, the Harlem Globetrotters' pooch, and dozens of other non-verbal creatures.

He was Godzooky on the Godzilla series. He was Sebastian the Cat and Bleep the Alien on Josie and the Pussycats. On Shazzan!, he did the voice of a camel.

He was Muttley on the Wacky Races and Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines and he was Mumbly (big difference) on Mumbly and on Scooby's All-Star Laff-a-Lympics.

He even worked on a lot of non-Hanna-Barbera shows. He was Tadpole on Spunky & Tadpole, and he was Hampton the Pig on Tiny Toon Adventures.

Now, this is a pretty impressive list but for several reasons, it's woefully incomplete. First off, no one ever hired Don Messick to do one voice. So if he did one part on a show, he probably did a half-dozen other characters. Also, as I mentioned, directors often used him as a "wild card," playing all sorts of supporting players, so he was heard on hundreds of shows wherein he did not play a regular character.

And the list is also incomplete because…well, it's incomplete. I haven't even mentioned the several Smurfs he played. Or the Jetsons' dog.

In fact, I haven't even mentioned Scooby Doo.

That's right: For over twenty years, Don made all those weird, expressive sounds — many of them starting with the sound of the letter "R" — that emanated from the longest-running cartoon superstar created for television…Scooby Doo.

Don was amazing. I've worked with all the great cartoon voice artists and no one could match him at multiple roles. (I even directed him a few times, which was mostly a matter of hiring him and then getting out of the way.) He could play nine people in a cartoon, all talking to each other. If you weren't watching, you'd swear nine separate people were making the sounds.

The oft-told story about Don — and it happened many times — had to do with overlapping. That means two actors talking at the same time, which drives the sound editors crazy. And the way the story went was that a director would have to halt a session and tell the actors, "The actor playing Pete and the actor playing Sam keep overlapping."

And there would be a pause before Don Messick said, "I'm playing both those parts."

---

In late September of '96, Don was in a recording session at Hanna-Barbera when something horrible happened.

Don had done thousands and thousands of recording sessions in his lifetime. He was always on time, always cooperative, always letter-perfect in his performance. If you are a director, you pray for actors like Don Messick. He had never, ever let anyone down.

Suddenly, in this session, he turned pale and muttered, "I can't do this anymore." Then he stumbled out of studio and went home. (No one seems to know exactly how he got home. Don lived about a two-hour drive from Hanna-Barbera.)

Another actor who was there at time told me, "If it had been anyone else, we'd have figured the guy had the flu or he had a hangover or something. But for Don Messick to not finish a job…we all started crying because we knew it had to be something very, very bad."

The next day, Don's agent phoned around town to quietly spread the word that Don Messick was retired, and that other actors should be cast to take over his characters.

That was doubly-chilling. Most actors want their agents to wait until they're dead, buried and well into rigor mortis before they let their roles be recast. It was obvious to everyone in the animation community that the long, glorious career of Don Messick had come to an end.

But some of us felt we'd been robbed. We wanted the chance to say good-bye to Don.

On October 12, 1996, Joe Barbera sent a limo to fetch Mr. and Mrs. Messick. They were chauffeured to Don's favorite Chinese restaurant for a "retirement party."

If you admire cartoon voice actors (and I do), the event was crammed with folks to admire. There was Henry Corden, who has been the second voice of Fred Flintstone, even longer than the late Alan Reed was the first. And there was Jean Vander Pyl, who has been the one and only Wilma Flintstone, all that time. (Messick did the voice of Bamm-Bamm on The Flintstones, along with hundreds of other supporting characters.)

There was Casey Kasem, who is a popular announcer and disc jockey, but whose big cartoon voice credit is all those years as Shaggy on the various Scooby Doo shows. (As mentioned, Don was Scooby Doo and, except for one season, his feisty nephew Scrappy, as well.)

There was Lucille Bliss, who has worked for every studio in the business, but who worked with Don on The Smurfs when she was Smurfette and he was Papa Smurf.

There was Gary Owens, another great announcer and TV personality, who played Space Ghost on the show of the same name. (Don was Space Ghost's monkey mascot Blip, as well as many of the villains.)

There was June Foray, the premier voice actress of the field, the voice of Rocky the Flying Squirrel, Natasha Fatale, and Tweety's owner, Granny, among hundreds of others. She had worked with Don hundreds of times in cartoons and commercials.

There was Howard Morris, the great character actor and director, who did the voice of Mr. Peebles on Magilla Gorilla (Don was Ricochet Rabbit on the same show). Howie also played various characters on The Jetsons (Don was the dog Astro on that show, and he also did various characters, including my favorite, a robot named Uniblab.) Howie was also Atom Ant originally but one day, he suggested that Joe Barbera do something anatomically-impractical, and then Don wound up playing Atom Ant.

There was Teresa Ganzel, who does occasional cartoon voice work, but who is best remembered as Johnny Carson's last Matinee Lady, and as a star of the short-lived situation comedy, The Duck Factory. (Don did a rare on-camera acting job playing a cartoon voice actor on The Duck Factory.)

And there were voice actors who work too much and play too many roles for me to start listing them here: Maurice LaMarche, Neil Ross, Gregg Berger, Walker Edmiston, Sharon Mack, Marvin Kaplan, Greg Burson, and others.

Daws Butler's widow Myrtis was there. So were animation producers like Joe Barbera and Harry Love, directors like Don Jurwich, and writers like Paul Dini and Earl Kress. It was quite an assemblage of folks, all there to pay tribute to Don Messick and to tell him how much we loved him.

Mr. Messick's speech was slurred from what we were told was a stroke. Strangely enough, while he was unable to actually form sentences, he was still able to make the "noise" of Scooby Doo. He was wearing a Scooby tie and he communicated with each of us by pointing to the Great Dane and muttering a little "thank you" in Scooby-speak. It came out as "Rank roo" but it was touching and warm, and I heard someone say, "Don made Scooby talk all those years…and now Scooby is helping Don to express himself."

At the end of the afternoon, a lot of us had damp eyes as we said good-bye to Don. We meant it as "good-bye for now," but I think most of us presumed it was in perpetuity. A few weeks later, those who inquired about visiting Don in his home were told that he was too ill, and that his doctors did not expect him to get better. He passed away quietly a little more than a year later but never worked again.

I found out about nine hours ago and have been writing this and calling friends ever since. Our loss is great…and it's not that we're going to miss the sound of Don Messick's voice. True, it was a part of all our childhoods, but we can turn on the Cartoon Network any hour of the day or night and the odds of hearing Messick are pretty good. (If he's not on the show that's on now, wait. He'll be on the next one…)

No, what a lot of us will miss is Don. He was a true gentleman, a true professional, and he did his job as well as humanly possible. And maybe just a little bit better than that, even.